Bishop Gorazd of Prague

Bishop Gorazd of Prague (26 May 1879-4 September 1942), born Matej Pavlik, was a Czech Orthodox Christian martyr. Bishop Gorazd provided refuge for the assassins of "the Hangman of Prague", Reinhard Heydrich, after Operation Anthropoid in June 1942, and he took full responsibility for hiding them when the SS found them in the crypt of the Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius. He was martyred by a German firing squad on 4 September 1942.

Biography
Matej Pavlik was born in Gross Wrbka, Moravia, Austria-Hungary (now Hruba Vrbka, Czech Republic) on 26 May 1879 to a Catholic family, and he was ordained a Catholic priest in Olmutz (Olomouc). After the implementation of religious freedom following Czechoslovakian independence at the end of World War I, Pavlik looked to the Eastern Orthodox Church, and he was consecrated Bishop of Moravia and Silesia on 24 September 1921 with the name of "Gorazd". He helped many Slovaks in returning to their ancestral faith of Orthodox Christianity, creating the Eparchy of Mukacevo and Presov in 1931, and his church was placed under the metropolitan of Berlin when Nazi Germany began its occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939. In 1942, Father Vladimir Petrek gave seven Czechoslovak Resistance assassins sanctuary at the Cyril and Methodius Church in Prague after Operation Anthropoid. Bishop Gorazd, recognizing the serious burden this place upon the church, asked for the resistance members to be moved somewhere else in a hearse. However, German SS troops besieged the cathedral on 18 June 1942, and all members of the group were killed. Hoping to prevent the Catholic priests and lay officials from being killed by the Nazis, Gorazd took full responsibility for hiding the resistance members, and he was arrested and tortured on 27 June 1942. On 4 September 1942, Gorazd, the Catholic priests, and lay officials were executed by firing squad at the Kobylisy Shooting Range, and he was canonized by the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1961 and by the Czech and Slovak Orthodox Church in 1987.